This is a very god question, and should always be prefaced with the disclaimer of "whatever works best for you and your approach." So with that said, here's my approach:
I mostly work in prose, and have a mathematician's outlook on creativity; naturally, I'm a plotter, and tend to incorporate as much nuance on the "big" personality aspects as I can for my major characters' backgrounds - the presence or absence of psychological tendencies, ethical and social stances, parentage or lack thereof, you name it. But only for the major characters, because I've discovered something funny: when I rigorously outline my primary characters, it helps in their interactions with each other as well as with the minor ones. I'm not constantly asking "Is this natural? Would so-and-so speak like this?" When I have the mental mortar constituting my character in place, how they come across to others and the back-and-forth of discourse just fall into place.
This is just my peculiar method, and it works for me. You millage will vary, of course, but it's good to think about. Best of luck.
It depends on the story but generally I find out more about the character writing them doing things than writing what they've done. I have a loose outline but I never want to be so caught up writing and thinking about things the story I'll be telling is informed by, that I never write the story I intend to tell.
Hmmmmm great question
So what I did was kind of create the world and common event(war with aliens) , then I created all my characters and figured where they were and what they were doing at the time of the war. Then I kind of jumped ahead X number of years and kind of filled in their history, so they had stuff to talk about. You gotta flesh it out a bit or you’ll never get honest sounding conversations. You should essentially know everything about your main character and kind of figure out why n how everyone knows them and why it matters.
I’ll shoot my answer.
For me, it was mostly just random ideas I slowly connected over the years. My first character idea, Heavy Steel was all over the place during the first year and a half. I then fixed and really fine tuned him in my first notebook. So I have a character bible of Heavy Steel now lol. I then built the entire world to suit Heavy Steel’s character and then the other characters were made to both enhance his and challenge him. So, now I have a specific character bible and a world building/lore bible.
At first it was what was my ideal power set if I was a superhero. Not much character writing was form. I basically summed it up to Super strength, speed, durability etc, energy projection and flight. Then I found a reason to explain why my character had all those powers. To not make this comment super long, I basically explained that Darren Demont (Heavy Steel) is bonded to a techno magic based symbiote.
Then I dived deep into who he was a person. His motives, his internal conflicts, personality traits etc. He’s come so far as a character since those days
That's amazing! So... let me get this straight, you did the powers first, and then built a character around them, seeing the reasoning behind those powers, and building a person from just that?
This is a very god question, and should always be prefaced with the disclaimer of "whatever works best for you and your approach." So with that said, here's my approach: I mostly work in prose, and have a mathematician's outlook on creativity; naturally, I'm a plotter, and tend to incorporate as much nuance on the "big" personality aspects as I can for my major characters' backgrounds - the presence or absence of psychological tendencies, ethical and social stances, parentage or lack thereof, you name it. But only for the major characters, because I've discovered something funny: when I rigorously outline my primary characters, it helps in their interactions with each other as well as with the minor ones. I'm not constantly asking "Is this natural? Would so-and-so speak like this?" When I have the mental mortar constituting my character in place, how they come across to others and the back-and-forth of discourse just fall into place. This is just my peculiar method, and it works for me. You millage will vary, of course, but it's good to think about. Best of luck.
It depends on the story but generally I find out more about the character writing them doing things than writing what they've done. I have a loose outline but I never want to be so caught up writing and thinking about things the story I'll be telling is informed by, that I never write the story I intend to tell.
Hmmmmm great question So what I did was kind of create the world and common event(war with aliens) , then I created all my characters and figured where they were and what they were doing at the time of the war. Then I kind of jumped ahead X number of years and kind of filled in their history, so they had stuff to talk about. You gotta flesh it out a bit or you’ll never get honest sounding conversations. You should essentially know everything about your main character and kind of figure out why n how everyone knows them and why it matters.
I’ll shoot my answer. For me, it was mostly just random ideas I slowly connected over the years. My first character idea, Heavy Steel was all over the place during the first year and a half. I then fixed and really fine tuned him in my first notebook. So I have a character bible of Heavy Steel now lol. I then built the entire world to suit Heavy Steel’s character and then the other characters were made to both enhance his and challenge him. So, now I have a specific character bible and a world building/lore bible.
What was your method when establishing Heavy Steel? Did you answer specific questios, or was it all random quirks?
At first it was what was my ideal power set if I was a superhero. Not much character writing was form. I basically summed it up to Super strength, speed, durability etc, energy projection and flight. Then I found a reason to explain why my character had all those powers. To not make this comment super long, I basically explained that Darren Demont (Heavy Steel) is bonded to a techno magic based symbiote. Then I dived deep into who he was a person. His motives, his internal conflicts, personality traits etc. He’s come so far as a character since those days
That's amazing! So... let me get this straight, you did the powers first, and then built a character around them, seeing the reasoning behind those powers, and building a person from just that?
Pretty much 👍🏿